Robert Smith Vance

Robert Smith Vance (May 10, 1931 – December 16, 1989) was a United States federal judge. He is one of the few judges in American history to have been assassinated as the result of his judicial service.

As a lawyer, Vance quickly sided with the developing civil rights movement, as shown as his participation as an intervening plaintiff in litigation that ultimately resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Reynolds v. Sims, which decided that state legislative districts had to be roughly equal in population. Vance also was the first notable Birmingham attorney to reject the unwritten "gentleman's agreement" by which all black members of a jury pool were eliminated from serving as jurors in civil cases.

Vance served as Chairman of the Alabama Democratic Party from 1966 to 1977. His election as Chairman capped a struggle within the Alabama Democratic Party, as a group loyal to the national party wrested control from a states' right faction loyal to Governor George Wallace. Throughout Vance's tenure as chairman, Wallace was never able to capture the state party organization, despite continual struggles between the two factions.

The most well-known example of this fight came during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, as competing slates of delegates vied for credentials to be seated. Vance's group of party loyalists overcame challenges from both Wallace's group and a predominantly black slate headed by Dr. John Cashin of Huntsville, Alabama.

On December 16, 1989, Vance was killed at his home in Mountain Brook, Alabama when he opened a package containing a mail bomb. Vance was killed instantly and his wife, Helen, was seriously injured. After an intensive investigation, the federal government charged Walter Leroy Moody, Jr. with the murders of Judge Vance and of Robert E. Robinson, a black civil rights attorney in Savannah, Georgia, who had been killed in a separate explosion. Moody was also charged with mailing bombs that were defused at the Eleventh Circuit's headquarters and at the Jacksonville office of the NAACP.

Moody had previously been convicted in 1972 of the possession of a bomb that had exploded in his house. He served four years in federal prison. Prosecutors speculated that Moody's motive for killing Judge Vance was revenge against Vance's court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, which had refused to expunge that conviction. Vance himself, however, had not been a member of the panel that considered Moody's earlier case. Following John H. Wood, Jr. and Richard J. Daronco, Vance became the third federal judge in the 20th century to be assassinated as a result of his judicial service.

After an order was entered directing the recusal of all circuit and district judges within the Eleventh Circuit, Moody's trial for murder and related crimes was presided over by Judge Edward J. Devitt of the District of Minnesota. Moody was convicted on all counts.[citation needed]

He was sentenced to seven federal life terms. Subsequently, an Alabama state-court jury convicted Moody of Judge Vance's murder and he was sentenced to death in 1997.[1] He remains on death row at the Holman Correctional Facility near Atmore, Alabama. He entered death row on February 13, 1997.[2] Moody has the Alabama Institutional Serial # 00Z613.[3]

Vance's older son, Robert Vance, Jr., currently serves as a state circuit court judge in Birmingham, having first been appointed to that position in November 2002, and elected in 2004. He was the Democratic candidate for Chief Justice of Alabama's Supreme Court in the 2012 election, running against the controversial Republican Roy Moore. Although he ran a spirited campaign (especially given that he did not enter the race until August[4]), he ultimately lost to Moore 51.76% to 48.24%.[5] His younger son is a doctor in North Carolina. Vance's daughter-in-law, Joyce White Vance, was named U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama in July 2009.

^"Moody Lawyer Quits." Associated Press at the Gadsden Times. B2. March 13, 1997. Retrieved from Google News (5 of 22) on March 3, 2011. "Moody, now at Holman Prison near Atmore, is serving seven federal life prison terms and was sentenced to death last moth after the state trial in Birmingham."